Helping Your Business Stand Out With Content

Have you created your own Marketing Technology Stack? If you haven't, I strongly encourage you to not only do so, but also to submit a visual depiction of your stack to the 2018 Stackies.

In this article I share with you my 2018 stack and my journey to submitting my very first one in 2016, as well as references from 2016 and 2017 to inspire you to think about your marketing technology stack and how you might visually represent it.

What is a Marketing Technology Stack?

A marketing technology stack is the sum of all the digital marketing tools you use for your business.

Mine has evolved considerably since my first blog in 2006 and even more since launching Simple Marketing Now in 2009 when I was using GoDaddy's Website Tonight + Blogger + Feedburner + MailChimp + Google Analytics.

Announcing the Stackies

Scott also came up with the concept of the Stackies. As he explains in "Announcing the 2016 Stackies to be awarded at MarTech,"

"Marketing technology stacks — the collection of marketing technology products that your company uses and how they’re conceptually organized — are an important part of modern marketing management. We can learn a lot by seeing how our peers conceive of their stacks and the pieces that they assemble together."

Why Think About Your Marketing Technology Stack?

As simple and straightforward as your business may be, chances are that it uses marketing technology in some way, manner or shape.

Furthermore, those marketing technologies have most probably increased in number over the past few years as you've improved the efficiency of your operations and increased your ability to service customers. For example,

To improve the effectiveness of team collaboration you may be using a project management tool

To update your online web and blog content, you may have embraced an easy-to-administer and access online content management system.

It does get complicated because all of these digital technologies need to be coordinated.

Ideally, they should be 'speaking' to one another in the same language and in real time. To make matters even more exhausting, new tools promising all kinds of benefits continue to crop up and determining their value can distract you from focusing on what needs your attention.

Thinking about your marketing technology stack - and depicting that visually - means you have an opportunity to step back and think about all of your digital tools, organize them in a way that makes sense and that, ideally, delivers value to prospects and customers. That process may even help you identify gaps or duplications in your stack.

Simple Marketing Now's 2018 Marketing Stack

I organized my stack into four categories. The first three - Attract, Convert and Nurture Client Relationships - have been part of my stack since 2016.

Attract is all about content creation on the website and three blogs and sharing that content via social channels. I've included the tools I use for visuals, for researching content ideas and keyword concepts.

Convert focuses on nurturing and developing contacts from the work done in Attract. Tools there allow me to create Call-to-action buttons, landing pages, lead-nurturing sequences, as well as emails, not to mention analyze behaviors, manage web page performance and more.

In Nurture Client Relationships, the tools either directly benefit clients (i.e., help them attract and convert) or facilitate collaboration with clients.

The fourth category came about in 2017 when I realized that I'm constantly experimenting with new technology to stay aware of new tools.

Stay Nimble! Experiment is my sandbox for trying new technology tools. I may experiment with clients or simply on myself.

That said, the challenge continues to be balancing the client nurturing with taking care of Simple Marketing Now and attracting/converting new clients. Staying focused is critical! That's where Headspace and time management come in!

My guiding principles:

Keep it simple for clients.

Keep it manageable for Simple Marketing Now.

Always remember that the tool must deliver value otherwise it's a drain.

Learning from the Stackies

As you might imagine, the Stackies represent a goldmine of ideas, tools to consider, and concepts to apply to your own business.

I'm realizing another benefit: appreciating how marketing technology stacks evolve. They are beautiful living entities and should reflect the changes your business goes through.

2017 Stackies Entries

Simply admire the visuals of the yearly Stackies entries to get a sense of the beauty of this project. Here's the 2017 visual: